Page 221 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

HIS SERENE IMAGE REPRESENTS the White-robed Guanyin seated
1
in a modified lotus position. Especially popular in China from the Song
T onward, the White-robed Guanyin (Baiyi Guanyin) is one of the thirty-
three manifestations of Guanyin Pusa (Sanskrit, Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara). 2
Although they are males in the Indian tradition, bodhisattvas, and Guanyin
in particular, tend to be shown as females in China beginning at least as early
as the Song dynasty. Only the urna, or raised dot at the center of the fore-
3
head, distinguishes this figure as a deity; the combination of robe, coiffure,
relaxed pose, and facial appearance identifies the image as the White-robed
Guanyin, an identification based on type rather than on specific attributes.
The image became the most characteristic single emblem of Buddhist
piety among the intelligentsia of China and Japan. Popular among Zen
(Chinese, Chan) Buddhists, White-robed Guanyin imagery was one part of
the movement to present deities in approachable, humanized form. 4
Although the transformation of Guanyin into a feminine deity was largely
a Chinese phenomenon, there is a basis in Indian scripture for the presen-
tation of the White-robed Guanyin as feminine, as John Rosenfield and
Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis have noted: 'Called in Sanskrit the PandaravasinT
(literally, white-clothed; in the feminine gender), she appears in theTaizo
mandala in the sector allotted to Avalokitesvara (in the lower left corner)
in conventional Indian guise: seated in the lotus position, wearing a dhoti,
scarf, and lavish crown, and by no means feminine in form. For reasons that
are not yet entirely clear, she seems to have caught the imagination of
monks and laymen, and emerged as the object of an independent cult/ 5
6
Often shown seated on a rock in a bamboo grove, the White-robed
Guanyin remained popular well into the Qing dynasty, late Ming and Qing
7
versions sometimes showing her holding a child. Literati artists of the late
Ming occasionally depicted the White-robed Guanyin in secular paintings, 8
and scholars of the late Ming and Qing often kept a sculpture depicting a
luohan or a White-robed Guanyin on the desk, less as a votive image than as
a reminder of the spiritual realm. 9
The two-character mark on the back reads Shisou, and refers to the
elusive artist whose name often appears on bronzes inlaid with silver wire
[see 16-18]; attributions to his hand remain unverifiable. The elegantly simple
but expressive style relates this sculpture to Dehua porcelain images of the
White-robed Guanyin that have been attributed to the second half of the
seventeenth century, suggesting an early Qing date for this piece. 10

T H E R O B E R T II. C L A G U E C O L L E C T I O N 2 2 1